Wilson v. Rove

Joe Wilson is calling for Karl Rove to resign. He claims that Rove is involved in a smear campaign against him in order to distract from the debate on “war and peace.” Isn’t THIS like “Homer Simpson telling Lance Armstrong he’s out of shape,” ?

I will admit that Rove probably, at worst, can be accused of reckless disregard for the position that Plame was in, if she indeed was covert. Kevin Drum notes that, while Rove might not have known Plame was covert for the CIA, but releasing that information without checking was irresponsible.

OK, sure, but not illegal. He also says this after finding evidence that Wilson was probably not the Bush hater that conservative make him out to be:

So was sending Joe Wilson to Niger — as one part of the CIA investigation of uranium sales — a scandal? Hardly — unless you think that hiring a guy who voted for Al Gore is ipso facto a scandal. Rather, it's just a trumped up smokescreen from the folks who want to divert your attention from the real scandal: one of the president's top aides exposed a covert CIA agent in order to gain revenge on someone who had become a political nuisance to them.

However, Joseph Lindgren and the guys at Powerline have done significant work to show that Wilson is nothing but a pretty prolific liar, and did lie about what he found out in Nigeria when it supported Bush’s policies. So who’s trying to distract from the real scandal?

Nonetheless, this situation kind of leaves Bush between a rock and a hard place. He has said before that he would definitely fire anyone who leaked state secrets to the press, but is that what Rove did? Either way there will be pressure on Bush to release Rove I think. There's definitely more to learn in this story.

And if nothing else, it all is distracting from more important things.
Like the Tour de France.